Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) is awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. Recipients of the award have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm. The award acknowledges both the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

2019 Call for Nominations

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation would like to open nominations for the 2019 Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software.

The Sol Katz Award for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) will be given to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the FOSS4G community. Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance open source ideals in the geospatial realm.

Sol Katz was an early pioneer of FOSS4G and left behind a large body of work in the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities while at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. This early FOSS4G archive provided both source code and applications freely available to the community. Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much guidance to the geospatial community at large.

Sol unfortunately passed away in 1999 from Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, but his legacy lives on in the open source world. Those interested in making a donation to the American Cancer Society, as per Sol's family's request, can do so at https://donate.cancer.org .

Nominations for the Sol Katz Award should be sent to SolKatzAward@osgeo.org with a description of the reasons for this nomination. Nominations will be accepted until end-of-day August 9th Anywhere on Earth (https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/aoe). A recipient will be decided from the nomination list by the OSGeo selection committee.

The winner of the Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software will be announced at the FOSS4G 2019 event in August, in Bucharest, Romania. The hope is that the award will both acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders, for years to come.

It should be noted that past awardees and selection committee members are not eligible.

Extended Program Text

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) is awarded
annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community.
Recipients of the award will have contributed significantly through their activities to advance
open source ideals in the geospatial realm. The hope is that the award will both
acknowledge the work of community members, and pay tribute to one of its founders,
for years to come.

Solomon Stuart Katz aka Sol 1947-1999

Background

Sol Katz was born in Sweden (on August 3rd, 1947) and moved to NY at the age of 1. Yiddish was
his first language, but he was amazingly bright, and learned both Hebrew
and English quickly. After high school, he spent three years in the US
Air Force, stationed in Germany, where he picked up yet another language.
Following his brief military career, he decided to go to Brooklyn College
in NY where he got his Bachelors in Geology in 2.5 years. He then married
his wife Hedy in 1969, and went back to Brooklyn College while teaching in
NY Public Schools and got his MA, also in Geology. After several years
working for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in several states, he settled down
in Lakewood, CO and decided to go back to school at the University of Denver in
Computer Science and earned a second masters. At this time, he also had two
children - Shanna and Risa. He was well loved in his office, at his
children's school, and at home. Always full of laughter and good humor,
Sol could easily be recognized by his flamboyant Hawaiian shirts and toucan
or propeller hats. Sadly, after fighting Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma for
almost a decade, Sol died April 23, 1999 in bed.

Open Source

Sol Katz was an early pioneer of GFOSS and left behind a large body of work in
the form of applications, format specifications, and utilities. In the early 80's,
Sol assisted in the development of a public domain GIS package called MOSS
(Map Overlay and Statistical System). This software was arguably the first open
source GIS software in the world. Sol would later go on to release and
maintain PC MOSS. He was also one of the first involved in public data translator
utilities. Utilities that he developed for converting DEMs and reading SDTS files
were contributed back to the geospatial community, and are still available today.
Sol was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial list servers, providing much
guidance to the geospatial community at large. Sol Katz's collection of GIS utilities
at the BLM continues to be implemented by many software projects. His legacy still lives on
in the GFOSS world.

Pics submitted by his daughters:

Daughters Risa and Shanna introducing the award in 2011:

Utilities

Sol's code continues to be implemented in many software drivers, including the updated sdts2dem utility. Sol Katz's collection of GIS utilities at the BLM was formerly available at ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/ (currently not available on the new BLM transfer system).